Saving the Slovenian Draught HorsebySebastian PelanMy name is Sebastian Pelan, I’m an indie filmmaker from Slovenia, and I need your support.A while ago, love made me move from Koper, a city on the coast to Žužemberk, an old town on the Krka river surrounded by hills and green pastures. Before moving here, I barely had any experience with horses (when I was a kid, I once hand-fed some a carrot and that’s it, I think). Now I see them and work with them daily, since my girlfriend studies veterinary medicine and has a beautiful horse of her own, Grey.Slovenian Draught Horses are great work or pleasure horsesGrey lives in a farm close to our home whose owners breed and try to preserve the Slovenian draught horse, a majestic breed of gentle giants that once provided their muscles and strength to the local population. Unfortunately, they’re being replaced by modern machinery and are now mostly bred for their meat. There are a few breeders, though, trying their best to give them a chance by popularizing them both as alternatives to machines and as recreational horses that can be ridden and can even jump!I immediately fell in love with these kind, yet tank-sized horses. So much, actually, that I decided to shoot a feature length documentary about them. I will need your support, however, to make this dream come true.If you want to support this magnificent, old and rare breed that some breeders are trying to preserve for future generations, please consider making a small donation to our campaign (available here).Popularizing this breed will help people understand the importance of preserving it, and this is the goal we have in mind.The Slovenian Draught breed, once a valuable asset to Slovenian communities, is becoming rare as horses are replaced by machineryYour contributions will be used for the research, production and distribution of the documentary. It will be released on limited edition Blu Ray and DVD (that contributors will be able to choose as perks) and over the Internet. We will also submit it to film festivals worldwide, and each and every contributor will be listed in the credits (there is even an Executive Producer credit available for very generous contributors).We will keep updating the campaign page with photos and videos of these magnificent animals as we go along, so keep checking it if you’re not 100% convinced yet. We are also working on a movie trailer that will be available soon.Another way of supporting us is by sharing this campaign on your social networks to help us spread the word, get more public attention and reach more potential contributors.Any kind of help will be immensely appreciated!Thank you!Sebastian

How do we define politics in an age where it is only the indulged who can afford it or who have any chance of becoming ‘politicians’? I’d like to know that there are much more important things being addressed in the world other than the exorbitant salaries of indulging super-fucks who pretend they are helping the world, when in reality they are ONLY forwarding their own careers. It’s a fact that most if not all politicians are wealthy; so why should they be paid? Would they still do the job, would they volunteer if they weren’t paid? I think not. Corruption incubates in political parties because the way a country is run, the very structure needs to be coherent for the rich to be able to plunder the poor, to exploit where no man has exploited before.Extreme capitalism is one term that could be used to clarify these ‘democratic’ societies that we inhabit, but that is just being too nice. Capitalism at its heart is an excuse to be selfish whereas socialism is an excuse to be selfish in another way. Both are ism’s, a part of a whole that has been undermined ever since we could write, ever since we could record things down on parchment, leaves or walls. When we began to speak, that’s when we knew we could manipulate others, and that is at the VERY CORE of politics – manipulation, speaking, and recording.Unfortunately we live in a society that deals with things based on their monetary value – i.e. if you have money, you have value. Karl Marx often comes up in these semi-literate equations of communication amongst the very literate, but he’d be appalled at what has happened to the world on every continent. Just as Darwin wouldn’t be a Darwinist, Marx wouldn’t be a Marxist. They would have adapted, learned to survive differently, to change their thinking and move on.We have not moved on. Simply because the general public’s awareness of reality has been obliterated and bombarded by the manipulating moguls of the twentieth century. How can a person know the truth in today’s age? How can information be filtered? It is becoming much more difficult to define sanity and to see where the line is because that is what has been intended. A person that wants to confuse you will need you to not know, to be perturbed, to feel ill at ease amongst facts. That is what politics is for.There are several weapons of mass confusion being used by politics and its soldiers – controlled media, economics (that god-awful subject that has as much validity as medicine has as being a science), psychology and psychiatry, those subjects now taught and extolled as being supremely efficient at dictating our ‘ailments’, when in fact they have NOT a clue. Poor education, or to be more precise, poorly conceived education that rots the minds of all. Our ‘higher’ education system has been high jacked by politically-correct terrorists.The health system goes hand in hand with the conglomerates of legal drug trafficking and unlawful genetically modifying scoundrels who are trying their best to OWN, control and dominate a market that belongs to no one and everyone. Food is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed in the name of profit. Politicians only care about keeping this going, about being a part, a cog in the wheel that turns their efforts into wealth, which gives them prestige.So what is politics I ask? Politics is a disease that runs through the veins of our society. It has invaded the host and spread. No radiation can rid it from us because it adapts. We don’t need politicians as we don’t need politics because we know what needs to be done. We naturally know and naturally do things every-day of our lives that move us forward in ways that only the individual can understand. Our society might temporarily breakdown, just like a divorced couple that come to terms with change, but eventually they get back on their feet and are propelled into a better existence.Throw politics away, get rid of the weapon that is being used against us for our ‘own good’ and take back your own lives. Live amongst the stars, travel the universe, challenge the status quo, feel the wind, look the other way and for god’s sake be responsible for your own lives. We are genuinely capable of survival and creating our own destiny because we’ve already done it. Just do it once more.

With what is happening at Amazon and Hachette at the moment, it’s difficult to come to terms at just how much power these groups have. Why is so much power bestowed upon and fought over by so few? Perhaps it’s because we let it happen, just as we let the giant bookstores of the past turn our local small, quaint and personal store into a shambles. We let it happen, we caused it, not these guys, but one thing is for sure – they promised you and me that they could do something better, that they had better service, that their prices were better and in the long term you’d be better off. Did that happen? Is that true? Has Amazon just taken off where those guys failed?

Look at what has happened. Amazon began as the little guy fighting for the other little guy and for space, to defeat the mass market moguls, but now that very notion has become lost in ever conquering, manipulation of the market and dominance. Basically, they have become what they were fighting. Their enemy, of which now is a colleague wasn’t doing the right thing by the community because they continuously lectured on how it’s all about YOU – the reader, the writer, but that was a lie. It has never been about you or me or the other guy. It’s ONLY ever been about the bottom line. Personal service cannot exist at that level; care and independent growth always take a back seat to the evils of mass production. That is why Amazon has succeeded in replacing them, but they are also, NOT the answer. Amazon is merely a temporary solution.

Let’s call the Amazon model an emergency plan, a situation that has begged for change. Amazon has fought the fight, but for themselves, again, in the name of truth. Don’t listen to what THEY say because it’s unimportant, what you must do is watch what they DO and then you can determine if they are for or against the community.

The only way forward is a network of indies, of strong, creative and vigilant persons who implement their ideas in a way that everyone wins, and that IS possible as long as independence is not sublimated for profit. We are at a spear head of change in our society and what we do right now will determine our very existence. It will determine where we are in ten years’ time and beyond.

Long live the Indie!

Long live the truth!

For it does exist, it isn’t subjective and we can be a part of it.

The Value of ONE culture

What is a degree from a university worth today? Many may WANT a degree to have value because they have put in the effort to study a particular course and then graduate hoping to find a job however does the fact that many people with degrees want that degree to mean something really mean that it does have value?Universities today are broken up into little areas, cordoned off with one area for the sciences and mathematics, another the humanities and on and on but where are the humans? I'm referring of course to the 1959 Rede lecture by C.P Snow'The Two Cultures'. He talks about how the humanities and sciences are unable to talk to each other as if they have nothing in common. Today it is more real than ever that a chasm has formed and is getting bigger between groups of people - not just at universities it is starting with schools and enters our workplaces. Is it because we are being driven that way by some unknown force, by nature or is it something more endemic to our society?It could be argued that there are many pressures that are pulling us apart, forcing us to choose sides. The very pressure of choosing a 'career' for the wrong reasons can destroy people or force them to be something they are not. This pressure has come from a need for a person to begin early his or her evaluation of the working world and decide a number of things such as the highest earning, the most wanted type of job or just something that will help that person build a successful life for a future family.Are the youth of today still concerned with this fiscal aspect of career or are they the ones that will rebel and go the way that makes them 'feel good'? Is the youth today the 'Third-culture' referred to later by Brockman in his book titled The Third Culture in 1995 or are they another form of the third-culture - the culture that bridges the chasm between the disparate other two cultures? Has extreme-capitalism gone too far in its endeavor to create a perfect playing field for the imperfect arena of economics?I think so and it would behoove our youth to take the bull by the horn and show us the way where others have failed to live by the truth. Our education system today is in dire need of a shake-up; the establishment has controlled the reigns for so long that now it's weary hands, barely able to grasp them and wield its riding crop should be ousted for a change for the better - a new generation; the third-culture that brings us back to one - one human culture.

Academia is a funny thing, but what is it really?

Many times, reading academic papers, I feel a need to vomit in my own mouth. The way academics hold themselves up high in the world because they have devoted time to a certain subject area. Unfortunately it’s usually to the detriment of common sense, and actually being part of something, that makes a viewpoint necessary and vital.Academics at all times try to pull themselves back from whatever they are writing about. They do their best to portray the writing as some completely objective, totally unbiased and argued point of view.The problem with this is many. Firstly, academics, as far as I can see don’t know how to write. That’s many, most, but not all of course, but many. It’s probably because of the brainwashing that they receive when they begin their undergraduate existence.They’re told to be critical, to write in the third person, to reference, reference, and reference. Yes, basically they are told that nothing they say could ever have any benefit, unless of course they make it through the hoops, get to the end of the line and scratch their grey locks and pump out a thesis that has taken them half a life to research on a topic that is as interesting as having mercury poisoning on the lungs, and yet there are people that want to be academics.Why?Science, the new science has demonstrated that there is no such thing as objectivity, so all that who Ha! about leaving yourself out is false. A viewpoint in the universe is everything because that is what the universe is made of – viewpoints, yours and mine.Let’s forsake this Wankademia for something a little more civilised shall we, something that involves us all, something warm-hearted, truth seeking!Academia is more destructive than this. Our universities have been hijacked by this thinking. They want people that are studying at universities to be hatted in this thinking that creates mediocrity. The ironic thing is that academia preaches the exact opposite, but what they are really creating is a world of dummies. Sometimes, well-read dummies, but mostly graduates are brainwashed buffoons who will jump when told. They are lined up like soldiers ready to face battle against ‘ignorance’ when really they are carrying the flag.Universities should be places of learning. They should be places of NEW, of rejection, of non-conformity, but unfortunately this is not the case. The graduate of today must graduate again, and again before he or she is then told that they are too old. Universities must be places of organic growth, that change on a moment’s notice to face a new challenge.Are they?NO. Indeed this is a thing of the past. The most important thing now is the rigor of learning how to not think for yourself.Wankademia has a lot to answer for because I don’t want my children going to a school that tells them they can’t do this, shouldn’t do that, must think this, have to write like that! I want my kids to go to a school where the teachers say “I don’t know, could be! Why don’t you see for yourself?” I want my children to be challenged NOT smothered, NOT administered to death.